/Steve

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Martin, Jonathan wrote:

> I stand corrected.  Curtis has all the answers and he's sitting on them.
> =P
>
> Worrying about multiplexing settings and tape failures?  Come on, that's
> about as soft a cost as you can dream up.
>
> -Jonathan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Curtis Preston [mailto:cpreston AT glasshouse DOT com]
> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 2:06 PM
> To: Martin, Jonathan; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
>
> Oh, I wouldn't say that. ;)  We've been doing a lot of comparisons
> lately, and the comparisons include all of what you listed plus the cost
> differential in cost of operation.  For example, opex savings from not
> having to worry about multiplexing settings, tape failures, etc.
>
> ---
> W. Curtis Preston
> Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com
> VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Martin,
> Jonathan
> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:37 AM
> To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
>
>
> I think what I'm reading here is that no one has done a true 1-to-1
> comparison on Tape versus Deduplication / disk.  I guess the next
> question is, what would go into such a comparison?
>
> 1) Recovery Point Objective
> 2) Amount of Data To Be Backed Up
> 3) Retention
> 4) Cost of Hardware (Deduplication Appliance w/ Disk)
> 5) Cost of Hardware (Tape Library)
> 6) Annual Maintenance on Hardware Above
> 7) Cost of Media w/ Replacement Figures
> 8) Cost to power / cool disks (infrastructure)
> 9) Cost of Network link to remote site for de-dupe
> 10) Cost of Media Transportation and Storage
>
> Price per GB unless factoring in at least all of the above is useless
> and much of that information depends on configuration.  I did such an
> analysis when we upgraded to NBU6 and considered deduplication this time
> last year.  In my case, many of the features of disk based deduplication
> weren't applicable to my situation (especially RPO) so tape was easily
> cheaper.  If you are shipping media offsite daily though for a >=1 day
> RPO then deduplication definitely makes a play.  Further price per gig
> on the disk side has been heavily influenced by "consumer grade" SATA
> drives at 750gb and 1TB bringing costs way down in comparison to only 1
> or 2 years ago.
>
> There's certainly a lot of data to injest before making claims of either
> technology's superiority in a particular environment.
>
> -Jonathan
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Curtis
> Preston
> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 1:10 PM
> To: Justin Piszcz; Jeff Lightner
> Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
>
> First, you can't compare the cost of disk and tape directly like that.
> You have to include the drives and robots.  A drive by itself is useful;
> a tape by itself is not.
>
> Setting that aside, if I put that disk in a system that's doing 20:1
> de-duplication, my cost is now 1.65c/GB vs your 3-9c/GB.
>
> ---
> W. Curtis Preston
> Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com
> VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Justin
> Piszcz
> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 7:36 AM
> To: Jeff Lightner
> Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
>
>
> I believe disks are 33c/gigabyte and tapes are 3-9cents/gigabyte or even
>
> cheaper, I do not remember the exact figures, but someone I know has
> done a cost analysis and tapes were by far cheaper.  Also something that
> nobody calculates is the cost of power to keep disks spinning.
>
> Justin.
>
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:
>
>> Disk is not cheaper?  You've done a cost analysis?
>>
>> Not saying you're wrong and I haven't done an analysis but I'd be
>> surprised if disks didn't actually work out to be cheaper over time:
>>
>> 1) Tapes age/break - We buy on average several hundred tapes a year -
>> support on a disk array for failing disks may or may not be more
>> expensive.
>>
>> 2) Transport/storage - We have to pay for offsite storage and transfer
> -
>> it seems just putting an array in offsite facility would eliminate the
>
>> need for transportation (in trucks) cost.  Of course there would be
> cost
>> in the data transfer disk to disk but since everyone seems to have
>> connectivity over the internet it might be possible to do this using a
>
>> B2B link rather than via dedicated circuits.
>>
>> 3) Labor cost in dealing with mechanical failures of robots.   This
> one
>> is hidden in salary but every time I have to work on a robot it means
> I
>> can't be working on something else.   While disk drives fail it
> doesn't
>> seem to happen nearly as often as having to fish a tape out of a drive
>
>> or the tape drive itself having failed.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Justin Piszcz [mailto:jpiszcz AT lucidpixels DOT com]
>> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:08 AM
>> To: Jeff Lightner
>> Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Jeff Lightner wrote:
>>
>>> Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
>>> existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is
> what
>>> the industry is doing.   The idea being we'd have our disk backup
>>> devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
>>> another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
>
>>> tapes.
>>>
>>> It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
>> was
>>> planning to do so?
>>>
>>
>> That seems to be the way people are 'thinking' but the bottom line is
>> disk still is not cheaper than LTO-3 tape and there are a lot of
>> advantages to tape; however, convicing management of this is an uphill
>
>> battle.
>>
>> Justin.
>> ----------------------------------
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